1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to hyperlinking on the World Wide Web, and more specifically to a system, method and program for restricting deep hyperlinking into Web sites of other content producers by rerouting a deep hyperlink to the home page of the Web site along with directions for the sequence of links to get to the deep link from the home page.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet, initially referred to as a collection of xe2x80x9cinterconnected networksxe2x80x9d, is a set of computer networks, possibly dissimilar, joined together by means of gateways that handle data transfer and the conversion of messages from the sending network to the protocols used by the receiving network. When capitalized, the term xe2x80x9cInternetxe2x80x9d refers to the collection of networks and gateways that use the TCP/IP suite or protocols.
Currently, the most commonly employed method of transferring data over the Internet is to employ the World Wide Web environment, referred to herein as xe2x80x9cthe Webxe2x80x9d.
Other Internet resources exist for transferring information, such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Gopher, but have not achieved the popularity of the Web. In the Web environment, servers and clients effect data transfer using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a known protocol for handling the transfer of various data files (e.g., text, still graphic images, audio, motion video, etc.).
Deep hyperlinks point directly to Web pages or other content of a different Web site. This may possibly result in bypassing the advertising-rich home pages or other identifying pages for the different Web site. Also, the original source, i.e., the content provider, of the content of a deep link can become obscure.
For clarification, a content provider is used herein to refer to the owner of the content that is being linked to; and a content aggregator is an entity that provides links to the sites of the content providers and may not necessarily provide any original content.
Consequently, legal controversies over deep linking have developed. On the one side, some believe that deep linking should be illegal. For example, intellectual property owners of content rich information, such as movie studios, believe that they have the right to protect their rights to their Web page content by not permitting others to link to their sites that contain copyrighted material without their specific authorization. They believe that property owners who create content should have a right to determine how others experience their Web site. Also, if advertising-rich home pages are bypassed, then the owner of those sites may suffer diminished revenue.
On the other hand, since linking is what the Web is all about, others believe that if links are banned or restrictions are put on linking, then the whole Internet would have to undergo a transformation. The whole point of the Web is for everything to be linked to everything else. The belief by some is that deep linking should be permissible because anyone who creates a Web page in effect grants the cyberspace community at large an implied license to link to it.
The controversies surrounding deep linking were exemplified in a lawsuit between a content provider and a content aggregator over such links. The content provider was an established business within the Internet environment and within the outside physical world. The content provider sold tickets to concerts, plays, sports events, and other events. A customer could buy tickets from the content provider through the Web, by the phone, and by physically going to other outlets. For example, the content provider had arrangements with music stores, shopping malls, and other locations to sell tickets at such given locations. To buy tickets over the Web, a user would access the content provider""s home page, and follow links to purchase the desired tickets. While the customer traversed the applicable links from the home page to purchase the desired tickets, the user would see other events and any associated advertising for such other events. It appears that a content aggregator provided a city guide Web site that offered full service to customers which included links to the content provider to buy tickets. Although the content provider still received payment for tickets purchased from users via the content aggregator link, the content provider was not receiving the full benefit of being the owner of its Web site. That is, the content provider was not able to serve each of its customers in its own desired manner since the customers from the content aggregator were being lead deep into the content provider""s site avoiding the information provided by the content provider on its home page and subsequent pages. As such, the content aggregator was drawing customers to its own site even though it did not provide the tickets through its own Web server, thereby generating additional advertising revenue for itself.
Currently, one way in which a content provider can protect access to particular information within its Web site is to grant authorization through the use of id""s and passwords. If every user becomes authorized through each user""s own password, at least the content provider has the means to know how many users are accessing the site and a form of identity of those users. The content provider can use this information as a means for compensation, i.e., by using subscription fees in exchange for authorization, or to use the identifying user information to send advertising promotions to in order to keep the content producer in business. As such, a content provider can protect access to particular information by using passwords which prevent anyone from going deep inside their page unless authorized.
The problem with this approach is that if every content provider required passwords, then a user would have an unmanageable number of different passwords that the user would have to keep track of for all of the different possible content producers the user would access. As such, password authorization schemes on the Internet are burdensome to users.
It is an object of the invention to prevent deep hyperlinking on the Web in a way that is beneficial to each involved entity.
It is a further object of the invention to prevent deep hyperlinking on the Web independently of, i.e., without, password or other authorization schemes.
The system, method and program of the invention enables a content provider to maintain control over the way in which a user may view the content provider""s information. If the content provider receives a request for a Web page that is a deep hyperlink into the content provider""s Web site, the content provider reroutes the request to the content provider""s home page. In addition, the content provider displays to the user the next link or sequence of links that the user should follow in order for the user to get to the desired deep link. As such, users are restricted from entering deeply into Web sites and bypassing a Web site""s home page.
In a preferred embodiment, cookies are sent by the Web server to the client. The cookies keep track of the originally requested deep hyperlinked page, and the path being followed by a user through the various pages from the home page to reach the desired page.
As such, a win-win-win situation is provided for the content aggregator, the content producer, and the user. The content aggregator can continue to provide a service to users by referencing pre-existing information owned by others by providing deep hyperlinks to the Web pages of these other owners. The content producer maintains control of the information, and the way in which the information is to be viewed by any and every user. The content producer can ensure that each user sees the home page and other pages on the way to the deeply hyperlinked page. As such, the content producer can require the user to view other content, advertisements, etc., through the order of traversal of the Web pages given to the user. The user gets the information the user is looking for, and with clear instructions as to how to reach it, without searching aimlessly for it. The user has some overhead in that the user is required to see multiple pages before viewing the deeply hyperlinked page. However, the time to do this is relatively small since the user, in coordination with the content producer, can do an HTTP GET of all of the pages before seeing them, thereby saving time while xe2x80x9cwaitingxe2x80x9d for each page.